## Resources [[Suikoden II Recruitment Guide]] [[Suikoden 2 Spoiler-Free Recruitment Guide]] ## Suikoden ### 2025-03-06 I finished this game in like a day which I wasn't expecting, but was also nice because it was, at best...*okay*. I'll get into it in a bit but basically **Suikoden** is the bones of a good game. Collecting the 108 stars was fine enough, although some were more annoying to get than others. I was worried about esoteric missable ones, but those were all pretty obvious (just don't kill anybody). The story was...fine. Immediately forgettable, tbh. Gremio was cool. But like...yeah. It is a solid nothing of a game. Frankly the most I remember is how bad the inventory system was. I also hated the army battles, which despite a lot of research just felt like very bad rock/paper/scissors. The coolest part of the game was the duels. Those are *also* rock/paper/scissors, but this time the enemy gives a tell that lets you better puzzle out what option to pick for a counter. Also, the **Suikoden** half of this duology looks terrible remastered - mostly because of the backgrounds. They look like overly polished **RPGMaker** tilesets. It's *really* egregious. I need to go back and check to see if the original's tilesets look as bad as this game's does. But the backgrounds are just so HD that it feels like they clash against the sprite art. It's uncanny to me. The battles looked a lot better though, because polished 3D environments just don't have that same effect - to me at least. So yeah. **Suikoden**! Guessing nobody bought this bundle for this game. ## Suikoden II ### 2025-03-09 Oh that's why everybody bought this bundle! Now, I'm quite early on - in fact, I haven't even gotten my fortress yet 5 hours in, which was 1/3 of my **Suikoden** playthrough - but I can already tell that **Suikoden II** is what its predecessor was meant to be. I said it elsewhere, but it's a good example of how interesting [[2021-05-10-game-sequels-better-than-the-original|videogame sequels]] are. This game is just objectively superior to the game that came before it in every way. Better graphics, better characters, better combat, better inventory management, ***much better army battles like holy fuck***. So far I'm quite engaged. The tilesets also look much better in this game. It's like [[Konami]] put all of the work into remastering the second game because that's what everyone cares about. I was not super into the culture of games when this one came out, but I underestimated how popular **Suikoden II** was. Like this game has a rabid fanbase in the same way that **Final Fantasy VII** does. I am beginning to see why, but there are still things that irritate me. Finding the 108 stars of destiny has been fun in both **Suikodens**, but finding a lot of them has big "archaic PS1 game" energy. I wish that they added some sort of QOL aspect so I could more easily figure out how to get everyone without constantly having [Suikosource](https://suikosource.com/) open like it's 1999. I should have some closing thoughts because I'm bringing this game with me on my upcoming trip, but so far so good. Luca Blight is probably going to get another 500 words out of me if he keeps this shtick up. ### 2025-03-10 Forgot to mention this yesterday but one thing I love about both of these games' combat is the simultaneous actioning. Can't believe more games don't do this if character and enemy speed is calculated ahead of time (as opposed to JRPGs with a visual turn order). Just have everything happen at once! It feels more visually dynamic, and it's way faster. It's not like this game is so complex with its combat that I feel like I'm going to miss something crucial. It's awesome.